


Collar

by GretchenSinister



Series: GretchenSinister's Quicksand Week [4]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Awkwardness, Collars, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23217355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: For Day 5: PossessivenessSandy and Pitch are inappropriate as ever, and Jack’s been recruited as the one to try to tell them that.
Relationships: Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Series: GretchenSinister's Quicksand Week [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669195
Kudos: 17
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics





	Collar

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 3/29/2014.

Jack had known that the Pitch’s transformation from the Guardian’s nemesis to…well, anything else, really, was going to be a long, strange, and difficult process. Frankly, when he had proposed it only a year after his initiation, he had expected the opposition from the others to be much greater than it had been. Much to his surprise, however, convincing them had since proven to be the simplest part of the process. Now, the main source of difficulties—as Jack now thought he should have expected—was Pitch’s personality, which was proving to be somewhat bizarre, now that he didn’t have a single-minded goal of murder.

This might not have become such a problem save for the fact that the Guardians included another person just as enthusiastically strange.

The boundaries of politeness could only be pushed so far, and while most of the… _things_ …Pitch had taken to wearing under his robe could be ignored (despite how brightly some of the gold accents gleamed), the wide gold collar he now wore—and his behavior regarding it—really, really couldn’t.

For one thing, it was a collar. There was some inescapable collar-ness about it, and it prevented anyone from thinking of it as, say, a necklace. Nope. It was a collar, with all the connotations.

For another thing, Pitch wouldn’t leave the darn thing alone. He would touch it absentmindedly, pressing his long fingers to the surface briefly in every quiet moment. When he was bored—which unfortunately happened frequently when all the Guardians were together—the situation was even worse. Then—and there was really no other way to describe it—he would _caress_ it. He would stroke it in curious patterns, occasionally grinning for no reason anyone else could see, and, well, since Jack was pretty sure the collar wasn’t real gold, but in fact dreamsand, he would lay good money on the idea that Pitch shouldn’t be doing what he was doing to the collar during otherwise perfectly civil meetings checking on his rehabilitation progress.

Anyway, it was a real problem, and somehow Jack had been roped into trying to solve it.

He spotted Sandy’s cloud nearby and swooped over to it. Hopefully the he’d see reason at once and the collar would be gone the next time the others saw Pitch, leaving the nature of Sandy and Pitch’s new relationship, if not a mystery, at least something they didn’t have to confront with long fingers touching gold at every opportunity.

“Sandy!” he called, and he cheerfully waved back, scooting over so there was room for Jack to land.

“So,” said Jack, once he had settled in. “Pitch sure seems to like that gold collar of his.” Sandy smiled at him and nodded, looking far too pleased with himself. Jack began to decipher the signs above his head as something like, “he never takes it off”, and decided the rest might best be left untranslated.

“Anyway, the thing is,” Jack went on, “do you think it’s really fair that he has to go around wearing that? I mean, if we want him to get used to thinking of himself as equal to the rest of us, well, the collar doesn’t seem to…um…go along with that goal, right?”

Sandy nodded thoughtfully, and small sand figures of himself and Pitch appeared above his head, with an equals sign between them.

“Yes! Exactly! But it’s not that way now!” Jack’s mind raced as he tried to figure out the argument that wouldn’t end in Sandy wearing some weird piece of black jewelry.

Sandy patted his arm reassuringly. It was only in Jack’s mind that he was seeing the inequality, don’t worry, Pitch wasn’t getting the wrong impression, and, anyway, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t wearing something Pitch had given him.

In explanation, he very matter-of-factly pulled down the collar of his pajamas, revealing quite a number of large, dark hickies.

“Uh.” Jack pulled his gaze back to where he could see Sandy talk. “That, uh, doesn’t seem equivalent to the collar?”

Well, of course, Sandy explained. The collar was much more appropriate for something that would often be seen in public.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> tejoxys said: Oh my god. What an embarrassing pair of space cadets. <3


End file.
